We come from Hamburg, have an ethical swimwear line, and live in our mobile home – we are seafarers.

The “No Poo” ‘Do

Maybe some of you have already heard of the “No Poo” method, which already has quite a following. Many of the advantages are self explanatory – as you probably know, washing your hair every day leads to excessive activity of the sebaceous glands and thus quickly greasing hair. Surfactants harmful to our planet are in most regular shampoos as well and of course any measure of reducing plastic waste is always a plus.

To be honest, I think the abbreviation is pretty silly, but the results are supposed to be great – “No Poo” stands for No Shampoo, just incase I didn’t make that connection clear yet.

This new step to life in our motorhome, far away from the office and locations where our faces are not familiar seemed like the ideal opportunity to try “No Poo” and see what the hype is about. Anyone we meet doesn’t know what we normally look like and will probably just think our hair is this way from the last surf session.

The beginning of the process is supposed to be somewhere between a bit difficult and gross. It can take up to six weeks for the sebaceous glands to reduce their activity and get back to how they would normally function if not triggered by our normal hair-washing habits. But we are still allowed to wash our hair! With water, white clay and coffee grounds. White clay is suppose to make the transition easier as it slightly foams and the coffee grounds reduce the size of the sebaceous glands and add a nice scent to the experience. Another trick to making the whole procedure smell even better is putting a few drops of rosemary and lime essential oil in the wild boar bristle hairbrush. I figured those scents combined are good for women and men. 🙂

The hairbrush evenly distributes the natural hair grease from the roots to the tips and that is actually the best care the hair can get! I’ve been reading up on the subject and apparently rye flour and baking soda can be used as alternatives – you’ll never guess what is said to work well as a conditioner… Cider vinegar.

We’ve been experimenting for 3 weeks now, and I have to say that we don’t miss the foaming mass on our heads – of course as surfers, we are used to going a few days without washing our hair anyway…